1 the Lotus in the West Hannah Olle Buddhism in Britain Is a Relatively

The Lotus in the West Hannah Olle Buddhism in Britain is a relatively new phenomenon. Tentatively, however, the lotus is growing and taking root. The Sheffield Buddhist Centre is a small element of this. The Centre is a part of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO), a worldwide organisation which was set up in Britain in 1967, by a British monk named Sangararkshita, who had been ordained in India after the Second World War. His aim was to ‘translate’ Buddhism so that it would be accessible for Westerners. Today, the movement has a Centre in most major cities in Britain, although membership numbers still remain relatively low. Each Centre organises classes for the practice of meditation and rituals, as well as the study of Buddhist texts. There are three levels of participation: ‘Friends of the Order’, whose only involvement is practicing at the Centre; ‘Mitras’, who have made a small commitment to the Order; and those who have joined the Order. This paper is an account of a small-scale study of the Sheffield Centre. In order to establish a context for this study, I shall begin by considering theories of religion 1 and modernity in the West, ideas concerning New Religious Movements and the New Age, and the literature about Buddhism in Britain. Modernity, disenchantment and secularisation in the rational world Approaches to religion in the modern Western world fall into three strands: those which view religion in decline as a result of modernity; those which acknowledge a change in the nature of religion in society, but argue that spirituality still exists in some form; and, more recently, those which consider religion from a postmodern perspective. Weber (1915) predicted that the advent of capitalism would produce a rational and scientific worldview, which would result in secularisation and the disenchantment of the world. Brian Wilson (1982) continued these themes, arguing that the development of the state and a rational worldview have challenged religion. According to Wilson, modernity results in agencies which reduce religion’s latent functions, such as social cohesion, a sense of identity and generally a means of coping with the world: "The whole significance of the secularisation process is that society does not, in the modern world derive its values from certain religious preconceptions which are then the basis for social organisation and social action", (Wilson, 1966, in Robertson, 1969: 157). However, he argues that individuals are discontent with this rationally-functioning world because it is a part of human nature to continue to seek answers. Wilson gives a very full account of the secularisation process; however, he presumes that traditional society was directed by religious institutions: "By most criteria, the social significance of religion for the conduct of human life was greater than it is now" (Wilson, 1982: 150), but provides little or no evidence for this presumption. In a similar fashion, Steve Bruce (1996) argues that, in contemporary Britain, religion is only the pursuit of a small minority compared to the Britain two centuries ago which, he claims, could indeed be described as ‘religious’. Whilst he can provide reasons for this decline in church attendance, the perspective he 2 has on secularisation, as a decline in church religion, is overly narrow and simplistic. Bruce, unlike Grace Davie and James Beckford, does not consider either the possibility of belief without participation or other forms of spirituality. Luckmann (1967) argues that church religion has moved to the margins of society because, "the internalisation of the symbolic reality of traditional religion is neither enforced nor, in the typical case, favoured by the social structure of contemporary society" (Luckmann, 1967: 37). Berger (1969) defines secularisation "not in the sense of what has happened with social institutions (for example the separation of church and state), but as applying to processes inside the human mind, that is, a secularisation of consciousness", (Berger, 1969: 16). The expansion of the state in rationalized modernity means that religion loses its role as the legitimator of social life (Berger, 1967). This leads to a pluralisation in which, instead of one religious institution defining reality for members of society, there are many such institutions, religious and non-religious. Berger claims that one cannot ignore that, for most people, reality isn't made meaningful by the supernatural, and that those for whom this is true are part of a cognitive minority. This situation produces a challenge to the socially-shared knowledge of those in that cognitive majority. The cognitive minority will either chose to maintain their belief system or the supernatural elements of their belief system will be eliminated. However, the human condition is threatened with death and suffering, for which non-religious theodicies provide little comfort. Berger therefore believes that there is still a place for the supernatural, or a transcendence of the this-worldly reality, which he hopes will allow us to rediscover the "true proportions of our experience" (Berger, 1969: 119). Beckford (1992) disagrees with Berger’s claim that religion is becoming more privatised. Instead Beckford argues that, in Britain alone, religious groups are increasingly being heard in political campaigns for change. Robertson (1989) also claims, in his argument about the need to consider globalisation alongside religion and modernity, that: "The tendency towards Western-led separation of 3 religion from politics began to be reversed in the mid 1970s. States became more involved in regulating 'deep' issues of human life, and religious groups in turn took a greater interest in regulating political matters" (Robertson, 1989 in Beckford and Luckmann, 1989: 3). Beckford (1992) believes not that the decrease in religion has destroyed religious belief, but that society is changing at the same rate as religion: "The important observation that religious believing seems to have become detached from religious belonging ... should be understood in relation to the observation that virtually all voluntary associations have been finding it difficult in the last few decades to attract and recruit members" (Beckford, 1992 in Davie, 1994: 194). He argues that an important social change is the influence of holism in encouraging a concept of spirituality in society in the absence of religion. Religion is an autonomous cultural resource that can be used for a wide range of purposes, for example in human rights movements or environmental campaigns. Davie concurs "that the sacred persists despite the obvious drop in practice" (Davie, 1994: 43). Having considered issues of modernity and religion, it remains to give brief consideration to the two opposing arguments concerning the effect of postmodernity on religion. The first is summarised by Baumann (1993), in his argument that postmodern culture dispenses with textual authority, historical narrativity or ethical foundationalism, leaving little space for religion. Baumann continues that people still need personal moral guidance, with which he accounts for the revival of religious movements. Opposing this, Giddens sees high modernity as resulting in the survival of religion. He claims that high modernity creates new moral problems, because modernity has gone as far as it can go and that in an ultimately rationalised abstract world people need reassurance, answers to questions and further moral guidance. Beckford (1996) disputes both of these views. He doesn’t believe, as Baumann does, that the appeal to authority for guidance in morality is a new phenomenon, viewing Giddens’ argument, that 4 religion re-emerges when people need reassurance, as overly functionalist. Beckford, drawing on Durkheim, is critical of both Baumann and Giddens’ assumptions that religion only serves a purpose for individuals and not collectivities. New Religious Movements and the New Age It was during the 1960s that New Religious Movements first became prominent. Eileen Barker's (1989) introduction to New Religious Movements shows that, in the face of declining public religion, a variety of movements have emerged which provide answers for individuals. By considering them as an objective phenomena she explodes some of the myths that circulate these movements. The book highlights some of the important features of these movements, such as charismatic leadership, memberships the majority of whom are educated and middle class, and methods of conversion that do not involve mind control. Roy Wallis (1984) claims that New Religious Movements can be divided into three categories: world-rejecting, world-accommodating, and world-affirming. World-rejecting religions subsume individual identity within the collective in order to pursue the movement’s conception of God. Members therefore have to break from everyday life to live in the movement’s commune, where the individual has less value than the group or authoritarian leader. Often, to affirm their collective identity, groups have particular forms of dress and a conception of the group as a family. World-affirming new religions are the polar opposite, believing that the world is a positive place and that the movement can help individuals to unlock their potential within the world and secure the goals of society. They view the individual as responsible for their own circumstances, not the social structure. Members remain within their families and work, but the movement sells them a service. World-accommodating religions form the third point of the triangle, in that beliefs are individually-held, but practice is collective. Wallis claims that rationalisation provides the back drop for New Religious Movements, which 5 compensate for the dehumanisation of a rationalised, impersonalised and bureaucratic world, by offering escape from that world (world-rejecting religions), improvement of the self within it (world-accommodating), or use of the supernatural to achieve its goals (world-affirming). James Beckford (1986) argues that it is more than rational society that leads to an influx of New Religious Movements. He claims that periods of rapid social change result in novel forms of religion.

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